


Mercy

by DaughterOfKings



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Extended Scene, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 13:28:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9326801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaughterOfKings/pseuds/DaughterOfKings
Summary: The flight from Jedha to Eadu.Chirrut prays. Bodhi cries. Cassian stills. Jyn watches.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Since this fic is an expansion on an existing scene, some of the dialogue is lifted directly from the film and/or Alexander Freed's excellent novelization.
> 
> 2) I also lifted (and edited) the "Jedi Oath" off of Google.

The jump from Jedha is rough. There’s no time, and Cassian doesn’t have enough skill for it to be anything else. In the moment that the destruction- _the massacre_ \- blurs away, and the ship blasts into hyperspace, Jyn is certain that she’s going to be sick. She squeezes her eyes shut and curls into a tight ball, breathing through her nose until the nausea passes. 

It’s quiet when she comes back to herself. The only sound over the hum of the engine is a low, indistinct murmur. At first, she thinks it’s Cassian at the comm unit, but when she glances his way she can see that he’s listening, not speaking. It’s the pilot, she realizes, huddled in the corner on Cassian’s other side. His lips never stop moving, and he keeps rubbing his wrists as if he’s been recently bound. 

Jyn tries not to think about the madness that had flickered in Saw’s eyes, but she can't help it.

She jolts when Chirrut speaks.

“Baze, tell me,” he says. “All of it? The whole city?”

Chirrut’s partner- _his name is Baze_ \- doesn’t answer, but something close to a sob escapes from the pilot. He presses his hands to his temples, mumbling frantic pleas that make Jyn’s blood run cold. She’s seen other men in the same state after Saw’s interrogations. She knows what he did to this one.

“Tell me,” Chirrut insists, loud enough that Jyn turns back towards him.

“All of it,” Baze says. His voice is bitter.

Jyn wonders what Guardians become when there is nothing left for them to guard. Cassian had called them trouble, but nothing can trouble the Empire now. _Nothing except my father..._

Cassian drops his headset with more force than is necessary, and calls up to the cockpit, “Set course for Eadu.”

Jyn draws herself up, makes him look at her, and asks, “Is that where my father is?”

Cassian nods. “I think so.”

“I brought the message,” the pilot murmurs. “I'm Bodhi. I-” He blinks, adjusts the dirty goggles on his forehead, and looks squarely at Jyn. “You’re Galen’s daughter.”

“You know him?” Jyn asks, feeling an old ache rise up within her. It’s a hard thing to accept that her father is alive, and this shaking, battered man knows more about him than she does.

“H-he said I could get right by myself. He said I could make it right, if I was brave enough and listened to what was in my heart. Do something about it.” Bodhi bows his head, and she barely catches the rest of what he says. “- too late.” 

“Seems pretty late to me,” Baze grumbles.

“No,” Jyn says, and everything about the message she saw in the caves comes pouring out. But as Bodhi’s expression lightens, she sees Cassian’s turn carefully blank. It hurts more than she expects to realize he doesn’t believe her. 

“You’re wrong about my father,” she tells him. “You think he’s still working for the Empire.”

“He did build it,” Cassian says, his tone just shy of patronizing. 

“Because he knew they’d do it without him,” Jyn counters. She sees the barest flicker of _something_ creep into his eyes, and thinks that he still doesn’t believe her, but maybe he wants to. He has to know what hopelessness does to a man if it stays too long; he was in Saw’s caves, too, after all.

But she doesn’t want to think about that.

“My father made a choice,” she says, forcing her voice to remain steady. “He sacrificed himself for the Rebellion. He’s rigged a trap inside it, inside the Death Star.” She looks at Bodhi again. “That’s why he sent you. To bring that message.”

Bodhi answers with a shaky nod. “I’m the messenger. I defected.”

“Where is it?” Cassian asks. “Where’s the message?” 

It’s awful to look at him when she admits she doesn’t have it. The light goes out of his eyes, and she berates herself for not thinking more clearly, not grabbing the data stick. “You don’t believe me,” she says.

He shakes his head. “I’m not the one you’ve got to convince."

“I believe her,” Chirrut cuts in. 

Cassian scoffs and says, “That’s good to know.” He slumps against the wall and lets out an angry breath. There’s a bruise forming on his cheek where K-2 struck him, and he rubs at it irritably.

Jyn opens her mouth to say something, shuts it, then tries again. “We’ll find him. My father. And we’ll bring him back, and he can tell the whole Alliance himself.” If that isn’t enough to convince them that they have a chance, then nothing will be.

Cassian doesn’t answer for a long moment, but then he nods. He still doesn’t believe her, and it still hurts, but they’re going to Eadu- _Papa_ \- and Jyn knows that’s all she can ask for right now.

“Too late,” Bodhi says softly. His voice shakes and cracks, and there are tears streaking through the dirt on his face. “Too late for my home. Couldn't make it right.” 

_He’s Jedhan_ , Jyn realizes, and she feels a sudden, white-hot anger at Saw for being too far gone to consider that a conscript from an occupied city might not have been loyal. But Saw is dead, Jedha is gone, and she doesn’t know the right words of comfort for this. 

“All is as the Force wills it,” Chirrut declares. 

Bodhi makes a broken noise. “I know it is. I know. My city for my collaboration.  Couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t make it right. Couldn’t ever- _Galen-_!”

Jyn’s stomach lurches at the sound of her father’s name, but Cassian is the one who moves, wrapping his arms around Bodhi from behind and pulling the pilot back against his chest. 

“Shh,” he says. “Bodhi, shh, it’s done. It’s done.”

It’s so careful how he doesn’t say that it’s going to be all right. Jyn doubts that Bodhi notices, but she does. The Guardians do, too, if the way Chirrut narrows his sightless eyes is any indication.

Cassian keeps his grip on Bodhi's body loose enough that it could be broken, but Bodhi leans into it rather than fighting to get away. He shakes, and cries, and tries to recite what sounds like a prayer for the dead. All the while, Cassian whispers instructions- _listen, focus, breathe_ \- in his ear until he collapses into an exhausted slumber. 

Jyn wishes she could do the same without dreaming.

Chirrut says, “The Jedi had a saying. ‘There is no death. There is the Force.'”

“That didn’t stop them from dying,” Baze answers flatly. 

Chirrut ignores him. “'There is peace,'” he says. “'There is knowledge.'”

Cassian’s eyes are closed and his head is tipped back against the wall, but Jyn can see him mouthing the words Chirrut is quoting. She wonders if she should know them, too- if she would have known them if she’d grown up another way. 

She tells herself it doesn’t matter.

“'There is serenity. There is harmony. There is no death. There is the Force.'” 

Chirrut repeats the litany as Bodhi gasps himself awake again. The pilot looks stricken, at first, but then his expression clears. “It’s done,” he murmurs, just as Cassian had earlier. “It’s done. It’s done.”

Cassian himself doesn’t move, feigning sleep, and Jyn doesn’t understand why until she realizes Bodhi is holding very still so as not to disturb him. The pilot’s hands aren’t even shaking anymore.

Jyn isn’t used to that kind of mercy.

She lets herself think of Saw's last words:  _Save the Rebelion,_ _s_ _ave the dream._ There hadn’t been much of a dreamer left in him in the end, but there might be enough of one left in Cassian. She wraps her fingers around her mother’s necklace and dares to hope.

_Rebellions are built on hope._


End file.
